Chapter 10

Another turn of the wrench. One more. Done.

Daran Gholla let out a breath of finality; the carbon dioxide expelled from his lungs hit the gili-membrane mask that covered his nose and mouth, fused with the surface, and escaped as tiny bubbles into the surrounding sea. Daran watched the bubbles float upwards, drew in a fresh draught of oxygen through the mask, and reached for his tool bag to replace the bone wrench.

Interesting tool, that wrench - and expensive - the same kind used by mechanics in the Hai Lei. Of course everything from above the surface was expensive; the wrench had been a birthday present from Daran's niece, who had moved above water with her parents five years before. Daran had often wondered what had possessed his sister and that idiot she called a husband to emigrate to the Hai Lei, to renounce their oath to the lord Ramad, to leave behind all they had ever known. They were not the only ones, of course: hundreds moved freely across the friendly border in both directions during the last twenty years of peace. But his own sister? Daran did not understand.

Closing the service door and slinging the tool bag around his shoulder, the mechanic called down to his partner.

"Done yet?" he said. The words were distorted twice as they passed the mask. Once as they hit the water, moving lethargically across the underwater expanse, and again as the hit the gili-membrane plugs which the other mechanic wore in his ears.

"Almost. You?" came the belated reply.

"Just finished," said Daran, upending his body and propelling himself downward. "I'll come help you."

Together, the two men refitted the set of pipes which they had removed four hours before. Finally, with the lashings secure and the belts tightened, they reopened the valves, allowing a burst of sulfurous gas to pour through the new turbine, and the generator chugged back to life. It was a large generator, with a series of snake-like pipes fitted to its base and five giant belts cranked around the main wheel, stretching off in five different directions toward the cities; it throbbed noisily underwater.

Daran had once studied schematics of generators used above water; though they served the same purpose and had the same function, they generally were much smaller, lasted longer, and were vastly more efficient. He wondered what it would be like to be a mechanic for one of those generators, to replace a turbine every five years rather than every half year. What would he do with his time?

"Alright, lets get this mess cleaned up," said Daran, looking at the old turbine lying on the seabed, pitted and corroded in many places, some holes large enough to fit an entire fist clear through the blade. Tortoise shell stood up to seawater better than wood or bone, but the geo-thermal gas still wore through it with frightening speed.

"Right, boss," said his partner. "Hey, how much behind schedule are we now?"

"Only about a day," Daran laughed. He grabbed one blade of the turbine; his partner took another.

"Yeah, you'd think they'd send us some more hands to help."

"Nah, they'd rather complain about not having power than do anything about it. This one here," he gestured toward the machine they had just repaired, "it's been down for two days. All of A-grid's had to borrow power from D-grid and E-grid till just now."

"Just two days? B-grid's been borrowing power for almost five days. Why didn't we go over there first?"

Daran glanced at the other man as they swam. "Haven't you heard?" he asked.

"Heard what?"

"Only some shitload of teenage girls come down from above water this morning."

"No!"

"Yep. All staying over in Namitan."

"Why? Where'd they come from?"

"Don't know why, but supposedly they were all slaves."

"No!"

"That's what I heard." Bubbles issued from Daran's mask in a steady stream as he kicked his legs.

"You mean to tell me that there really is a bunch of slavers up on the shore?"

"Apparently so."

The partner shook his head. "Always thought those were just stories to frighten the kids. Hell, I tell 'em to my own kids."

"Well," said Daran, "you don't got to take my word for it. You can go listen for yourself."

"Hmm?"

"Seems one of the girls is a princess from the Hai Lei. She's supposed to make some kind of speech or something."

"Really?"

"In just a couple hours. That's what the hurry was on A-grid."

"Yeah, I think I might go listen to that."

"You gonna tell the wife?" asked Daran, with a sly grin.

"Why?"

"Couple thousand wide-eyes teenage girls wandering around, you don't think she'd be a bit concerned?"

"Oh," the partner laughed. "Well, what she don't know won't hurt her, right?"

"My thoughts exactly," said Daran.

The two men finally succeeded in raising the damaged turbine up to one of the belts; Daran reached out to hook the thing on, and it lurched forward as the belt carried it on its way to the scrap yard. The generator rumbled and throbbed on the seabed, its main wheel spinning steadily, the lengths of belts disappearing into the distance. A school of golden mhana swam by from the East, their translucent fins swaying lazily in the undersea current.

Daran made the swim back to his village in under half an hour. The small dome, like a trapped bubble, looked as if it might at any moment float away. The mechanic sighed as he realized it would not be many more days before he would be called to patch the large gili-membrane sheets stretched across the dome's wooden frame. Legs kicking with long-accustomed ease, Daran approached the village from above, swimming down to the main entrance on the North side. He reached his fingertips out to touch the membrane as he passed along the dome's surface. Fascinating stuff, gili; made from the ground extracts of seaweed, jellyfish, shark fin, and bahi eggs, it set into a clear, pliable substance that formed an amazing bond with water, becoming almost part of the water. It became an impassible barrier, unbreakable and untearable, allowing only gasses to pass freely through, finally dissolving as the organic matter began to break down.

The mechanic at last reached the seabed, righting himself from his headlong dive and letting his feet come to rest momentarily in the soft, white sand. Various types of seaweed grew about the village entrance, some talk stalks that reached for the surface and some broad leaves that swayed in the water. Daran waved a greeting to several children who were playing happily along the reefs of coral, their giggles drifting slowly across the distance. Further out, he could just see the outlines of several women with braided baskets, harvesting the coral. A typical early afternoon would have seen more activity beneath the waves, but this day the sea was largely deserted around the small village.

With a shrug, Daran took a slow, lunging step toward the entrance. His hand touched the gili-pasa that covered the circular opening; not quite a membrane, the heavier substance actually allowed solid matter to pass through, seamlessly resealing itself afterward. Though it needed to be patched and repaired much more often than the gili-membrane which covered most of the village, there were only a handful of entrances, and the maintenance therefore much easier. Feeling the cool liquidity of the pasa substance, Daran's hand slid through, and he felt dryness on the other side. He closed his eyes and the rest of his body followed, emerging dry inside the village, with only trace amounts of gili clinging to his hair.

Still shouldering the weight of his tool bag, Daran began the slightly awkward motion of walking, heading along the streets toward his house. Bare feet plodding in the dry sand, he swung his free arm as he glanced at the familiar sights. Flowering cacti lined the village square, imported from the South; also imported was the pride of the village, a square patch of dark brown soil with a single plant sprouting from its surface, a tree of some sort, standing roughly twice the height of a man.

The buildings were mostly made of dead coral, cut in blocks from the reefs, and painted shades of red and orange to contrast the ever-present blue. From a wooden pole in the center of the square, the white banner of the Hai Menadin was displayed with its blue water-crest, held rigidly horizontal by small crosspiece since there was never any wind.

Again, Daran noticed there seemed to be less activity on the village streets. He saw a few people as he walked: the shark hunters carrying their three-pronged spears, the squid and octopus hunters with their nets and hooks, several fishermen's wives carrying their braided baskets, and half a dozen more children pouring water on the sand to build castles. But everyone he saw, save the children, seemed to be hurrying to put things away, as if finishing for the day: a very odd sight indeed at barely an hour past noon.

With a short walk, the mechanic arrived at his house, opened the door. He dropped his tool bag, looked around at the empty house, said: "Hello?"

"Dad?" called a feminine voice. "Oh good, you're home." The owner of the voice peeked briefly around a corner, a pretty girl of fifteen, her yellow-blonde hair swaying as she ducked back out of sight.

"Kaly, honey?" Daran called after her, slightly baffled.

"You can help us get ready," called the voice again from the other end of the hallway.

"Ready for what?" He started to follow. Long grooves were worn into the sand floor, marking the path of feet making many trips that morning.

"Honey?" called another voice. Daran's wife emerged from the opposite direction, green eyes sparkling. "I thought I heard you. Here, grab a..." She started to hand him a bag, but stopped at the blank expression on his face.

"What's going on?"

"We... well... we're getting ready to go."

"Go where?"

"To Namitan, of course." She waited for the spark of recognition to flicker in her husband's eyes, and when none did, she prompted: "To see the princess Lei. Jaan, or Joami I think, is her name. Or Jain. Some 'J' anyway..."

"Ahh... so... you know about that too?" Daran's visions of countless teenage girls began to fade.

"Of course. The whole village does, silly. We're almost all going."

"Really? Okay..."

"Right, and if we want a good view we'll need to leave pretty soon here." When her husband did not immediately take the bag she had thrust at him again, she said, "Go!"

And he went.

The story was the same in many villages surrounding the Hai Menadin city of Namitan. The waters were already filled with hundreds of swimmers, with thousands more soon to follow. Inside the city, the residents had been caught up in a similar whirlwind of activity, but one of preparation rather than departure or arrival. Like most underwater cities, many-storied buildings were build right up to the inner surface of the dome, taking the greatest advantage of the space possible. But Namitan, unlike any other underwater city, had already taken measures that very morning to accommodate two thousand additional bodies, and was busy preparing to make room for several thousand more due to arrive within the next hour.

Aside from the bustle and movement of supplies, there was the spectacle of two thousand teenage girls prancing about the city with skin the shone of the sun and a walk the spoke of a lifetime, however brief, above the waves. The exotic sight those youthful bodies provided was distracting at best, and it was not only the men who were looking. Even behind their crisscrossed scars and bruises, the girls radiated a wholesomeness, a purity, a raw sexuality that seemed to cloud the very air around them. Every teenage boy in the city had gathered, hidden behind pillars and boxes, watching open-mouthed as the girls went through a set of stretches and exercises just after the noon hour, under the direction of a mysterious hooded figure who called out commands with a sense of practiced authority.

That woman, her head covered by a blue hood, was the source of as many rumors as the rest of the girls by herself. She was not the Hai Lei princess - the princess was often seen by her side, or within the ranks of the common girls - but she seemed to be the leader of the freed slaves. Even the princess appeared to take her direction. Only the great lords or the High Chancellor himself should be able to command a son or daughter of royal blood, but this hooded woman could be neither of those. So the rumors spread and the mystery grew, all the while amid the never-ending bustle of movement.

Freed of their vices and finished with the first of their newly regimented exercises, the former slaves spread throughout the city, snaring the company of whomever their fancy struck. Here a single girl was engaged in sexual congress with three men in their late twenties, there a group of five girls sharing the bodies of two speechless teenage boys; in one corner a group of slave girls simply enjoyed each other's touches, while in another a group of city girls kneeled eagerly between the former slaves' legs. From almost every house came the satisfied sighs of female pleasure; for most of the girls it was the first pleasure their young lives had ever tasted.